The School on Heart's Content Road (56 page)

Late
P.M
. Marty Lees, once a low-ranking member of the Rapid City
SWAT
team, now just an operative, is back in his rented mobile home, transferred to this Maine situation, transferred
out
of there, due to complications, due to the fuckups of others and some bad turns.

Now, here he is. Oh, boy. Step one, a success.

Needs to get in that militia. Needs to be helpful. Needs to have that York guy stop staring at him like he is mold on dog shit. Needs to sort out the wacky shit from the real shit and why the Bureau thinks the other one, the Big Puppy, St. Onge, is more useful. Don't matter. They say he's dangerous, he's dangerous. We got time. We got all the time in the world. Like watching an ant farm. Watch those guys lift those big grains of sand. Watch 'em grunt. Blow a little air on 'em.

Next meeting of the Border Mountain Militia is in two weeks. No invitation yet. But there
will
be an invitation. Just need to keep being Mr. Charm and Trust Me. Go with the flow. See what turns up. You have to be like an artist. Thunder and lightning? You paint thunder and lightning. You see bananas and grapes in a bowl? You paint bananas and grapes in a bowl. You see scum? You paint scum. It ain't always pretty.

Statehouse, Augusta, Maine.

In the statehouse Hall of Flags, there is a set of stairs that takes you up to the two legislative chambers, the Senate off to the left, the House to the right. These stairs are marble. Very grand.

At the foot of these stairs are benches, for rest or for waiting. Water fountain. Big nice painting in a gold frame of Joshua Chamberlain, Civil War hero and past governor who has a nice bushy mustache. Self-possessed smile—a quiet smile—not the scary big-teeth smiles of today's politicians. To the right of the painting is the governor's office, a door with a frosted glass window. Paper sign says
USE OTHER DOOR
, with an arrow pointing to the right.

Old and ornate flags stand in glass cases. Flags with gold tassels, flagstaffs, and ornaments made with care and reverence, the way things were made
before progress
. Some of the flags are grayed and stained, by battle and by time. Yeah, war and time. So many lives and home places shattered or worn away. But the flags remain. Some of the flags are state flags. The rich blue. The moose and his lone tree, the word
DIRIGO
and radiant star above. The farmer and the sailor lean on their scythe and anchor. The moose, he reclines. The moose, the farmer, the sailor all enjoying great leisure, the lie, the leisure lie . . . this that was a lie then and is still a lie today. For what is life but eternal struggle, eternal vigilance, and breathtaking disappointment?

In the middle of the bright cavernous dome area, a bust of Governor Baxter, long dead, famous for his kinship with dogs and his generosity. And over by the windows, several tables are set up in a horseshoe, black backdrops for posters. Here we have some schoolteachers and their prized science students, science projects, the sixteen best of the year, best in the state, best projects, best students, best schools, top shelf. One schoolteacher is blonde and tense. She stands by the platter of doughnuts donated by a local business for people to munch on while they admire the noteworthy science projects.

Who are the people who will admire the science projects?

Here comes someone now, a nice lobbyist for Corporate America, for a corporation of magnificent proportions, big insurance company or investment firm, paper company or oil company, incinerator or sludge, or maybe tobacco, maybe nuclear waste “management.” Who knows? They are all pink-faced and light on their toes, like stars in a Broadway musical. This one says some nice predictable things about a young girl's wind tunnel. Another young girl's Ping-Pong-ball DNA and molecule diorama. He picks up a doughnut, a chocolate one with crunchy stuff on it. And the blond schoolteacher smiles and smiles at him.

A moment later (same place).

What is that clanking and bonking in the distance? And a big BUROOOOM! Sounds like a big drum. Must be something wonderful, something to do with our esteemed legislature, not in session but in and about. Maybe some special performance by another best school, best student, given to our esteemed governor, who has promised to bring lots more big business to Maine to “help” small business and “revitalize” Maine's economy.

All the schoolteachers in the sciency horseshoe smile as another fine pink lobbyist in his smashing and costly three-piece suit selects a doughnut and compliments the bright-eyed A-plus student who has fashioned wooden balls that represent atoms moments before and after fission.

What
is
that clanking and bonking and big drum sound? Seems to be getting louder. Maybe it is trouble with the furnace.

A pair of the corporate lobbyists are now standing near the projects, talking to each other. Their smiles are wide and white and pre-prescribed. One of them kind of glances in the direction of the stairs that go down to the lower hallway and the statehouse tunnel that connects the two main buildings, the mysterious racket drawing very close now, coming up, up, up the stairs. BUROOM!
Clank bonk
BUROOM!
chunkachunka chink chink tweedle zzzzzzzzzzz clonk!

Now a distinctive tromp tromp tromp along with the clanks and bonks and BUROOOOOM!s. And “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” . . . “Hup!”

Several lobbyists now smile in the direction of the mystery. Their smiles are expectant and contemplative. But the schoolteachers, sixteen in all, stare unsmiling, their eyes narrowed, foreheads pinched, lips thin. The sixteen best students are so bright-eyed, ready for whatever hits.

It arrives, a great army, each soldier armed with nothing less than a placard, a small fluttering graveyard-sized American flag, or a set of spoons, a cowbell, a kazoo, a flute, or a recorder. There is one fiddle and one sword, lotsa squirt guns. They are flushed, every one, because the great halls of democracy are, as usual, fossil-fuelishly overheated. So much sweaty uneven hair. A few soldiers look kind of grimy, overdressed or barely dressed, bruised, scratched, muscular or rotund, mouths with stains; some smell of their breakfasts of smoky meat, butter,
and eggs; some smell like live cattle and sheep; and there's a cheery sweet warm lipstick smell from one single source, a face war-painted with zigzags of crimson Avon. A few tricorne hats are worn, or yarn wigs. And plastic caps with ads on front. Several billed army caps, one bush hat. One Civil War kepi, gray. And what's that over there? A billowing but erect orange plume sticking out of a World War Two U.S. Marine helmet. Lots of BDU shirts of forest camo. A doctor's smock. A purple robe with artificial ermine trim resembling what kings used to wear. Several faces painted like skulls. Others painted camo. “Hup! . . . Hup! . . . Hup!”

A few masks. A gorilla. A lion. One boy about age seven is naked to the waist, his body painted red, his face red, his squirt gun not the cute lime-colored plastic kind; his is made of black plastic, an AK-47. Around his head a leather band and ten chicken feathers. Oddly, one child wears a lovely sundress. She is long-legged, with no war paint, just a beautiful face of African-European-American Indian heritage. She carries a placard that reads THROW OUT THE ALIEN GOVERNMENT.

And that was just the little kids. Big drum (BUROOM!) is carried by a strapping older teen who looks part bull, part biker, horns coming from his head (how does he do that?), leather jacket reads
HARLEY DAVIDSON
across the back and, of course, the wings. Black T-shirt. Ratty jeans. BUROOOM! Several tall girls walk slowly beside him, pacing their steps with the “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” called out by a small soldier. Small soldier in a yellow raincoat and bush hat, her long dark braid over one shoulder decorated in—yes—dozens of chicken feathers.

Isn't that “Hup” . . . “Hup” . . . “Hup” pace a lot like the graduation march the schoolteachers here would approve of?

A preteen girl with a lovely Nordic-looking face has her thick pale hair knotted up in a pink bandanna. She wears camo pants, military boots, and a black jersey with small cardboard messages pinned all over it, messages the teachers can't quite make out. But the full-sized flag on a long rough stick, which a chubby preteen boy totes proudly, is plain to see. Blue with the Maine state seal—moose, farmer, sailor, tree, star—
but
with something extra, big gold lettering across the top: The TRUE MAINE MILITIA.

Most of the schoolteachers behind the horseshoe feel so disapproving, they could faint. But the blonde one, now snorting with disgust, is
energized
.

Such a racket! The cowbells. The spoons. Hollow sticks. Big drum. Fiddle screeling, poorly played. And now what? Three recorders and a dozen kazoos doing “Yankee Doodle.” Small graveyard-sized American flags quiver in the hands of a long single-file line of small fry at the rear. No, not quite the rear. More militia hurrying to catch up, churning up the stairway, crossing the great room, and then the whole militia angles to the right and heads for the governor's office.

A sea of placards passes. CORPORATIONS OUT, WE THE PEOPLE IN!!! and NO MORE FUNNY BUSINESS!!! and NO MORE GRIDS! ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD!!! and WHOSE BUTT IS AMERICA KICKING NOW???!!!! CORPORATE BUTT!!! YOU BET!!! and PETROLEUM TELLS LIES. and CORPORATISM IS FASCISM. LOOK IT UP!

“This is disgusting!” proclaims the blonde schoolteacher, her eyes on fire, her lip curled. None of the other teachers can hear her words. Not with the racket of the militia storming past.

One really cute, chubby, round-faced blond boy, barely out of diapers, runs up to the teacherly assemblage and passes out fluorescent-orange copies of
The Recipe for Revolution,
or
Recipe,
which lays out the steps for dismantling corporate power and putting energy, food growing, water, education, and banking into the control of small communities only, thus “saving the world!”

Two other chubby three-year-olds, one with distinctive Passama-quoddy looks and a sleek, almost blue-black bowl-shaped haircut, march past wearing sandwich signs that read (both front and back) SIEGE! The teenage boy accompanying them waves his sign, which reads: HAVE A NICE DAY (
AFTER THE REVOLUTION
). And then two older figures with skull faces and tricorne hats trudge past with their placards: SAVE THE REPUBLIC FROM GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND THE CORPORATE GRIDS' GRIP! and DEATH TO THE CORPORATE PAPER GODZILLA! LIBERTY TO FLESH AND BLOOD ONLY!! and
BRING BACK OUR COMMONS.

The blonde schoolteacher reads a couple of lines of the
Recipe
and sniffs. “What is this drivel?”

Children hand out copies of the same to the corporate lobbyists, who continue to smile and look immeasurably pleased.

Corporate lobbyists are coming down the marble staircase. Corporate lobbyists are slipping out of the governor's office. Corporate lobbyists swarming everywhere, stepping aside to let the sea of children pass, while the faces of these children remain soldierly and grim, arriving at last at the closed door of the governor's office, not the one that reads
USE OTHER DOOR
but the correct door.